Tuesday, June 5, 2012

CHERRILHO BEACHINHO



Brazilian pressing of Career Suicide's "Cherry Beach" is now available! This no doubt waxed, tanned, and Orfeuian beast is now available in the streets of Rio, Brasilia, and Sao Paolo. But, you should play fisherman, cast a line, and reel this piece of ice cold Canadiana over to wherever you're from.

WE NEED TO PLAY A SHOW THERE.


Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Forking Paths



Once I sang a Christmas Carol with my wife.
We sang it, recorded it, dubbed, and sent it off to our little niece in Wales.
Her sister, who was a little older, and probably too cool for Christmas Carols needed a song too.
I wrote a song that "sounded like the Goo Goo Dolls."
(apparently my level of being 'in touch' is through the roof)
An opportunity arose.
Instead of a gift,
it became an article of labour.
Now it's a song that AC Newman sings on.
Now it works for me.
We still owe her a present.

THE ORIGINAL

THE FINAL

Friday, March 23, 2012

HI CHECK OUT MY OTHER OTHER BLOG ON THE RIVAL BLOGGIST'S PLATFORM

RIGHT HERE.

"Once I worked a demolition job in the East End of Toronto. I found this curious photo album in the rubble. He (you/her) seems to have taken a lot of photographs of bands, been in one yourself, and maybe even gone on tour with the Pointed Sticks, Cheap Trick, and Blondie (lost that photo). Who the hell are you?"

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Repost for the Wordy

Here is a tiny taster of a thought on the power of usage, something that -- should the twerpier side of yours truly appear more than once ever half year -- will appear more on this blog in the future.

Should also be noted that this sort of linguistic motif is part of the basis for the Fucked Up song, "Magic Word."

Read on HERE

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

WHO KILLED ANNA?

Once I recorded a record.
I asked someone to release it, and they said yes.
Then, for one reason or another, they said no.
Then, I asked someone else, and they said yes.
Then, for some reason or some other, it didn't seems to come through.
Then, I sent it to another person, but they didn't seem to think much about it.
However, they liked the b side.
Further, I sent it to yet another.
Forward, they decided to pass.
Finally, someone knocked at the door.
Fantastic, a home for the record.
Fortunately, they were on board with the plan.
Fifty were released, but I never received one.
In fact i've never even seen one.
Then, he disappeared, and the record is likely lost with him.
Here's a song off it.
It's a bit out of date.
The unanswerable question has been answered.
Glad I could help.

Lonely Wholesome, Who Killed Anna?

ULTRA LINGUA




Despite the more lasting (and often cartoonish) exports of Italy -- food, notions of community, photogenic antiquity, the word "EHHHHHHH," mustaches, Fascism in Colour, Futurism, fast talking etc -- the Italian language seems to be one of the most diverse mother tongues in Europe. Its diversity is both in its ability to be descriptive and broad, and its moveable type through the geography of the country. One unofficial statistic of talk-lore is that a new dialect erupts in Italy, on average every 7km's or so, making quite a statement at the importance of conversation. Meaning, of course, develops through speech: without certain aids, the nuance of conveyance for mood or the genuine can be lost in type and so spoken language, tonality, gesturing etc pick up the slack.

Not much of a revelation really, but what about when such a small linguistic geography gets splintered into so many pieces? Italy is 301,338 square kilometers, and if we are judging by our unofficial statistic of a new dialect every 7km, that's about 43,000 divisions if we're being lazy about math...and we are. According to the "Global Language Monitor" - a lazy internet search-produced result - there are 1, 013, 913 words in the English language, with more being neologized everyday. For the sake of baffling statistics, if we applied the threshold of changes that there are in Italy, that's a theoretical 43,598,259,000 terms of expression happening at any given second of the day.

The point is not to impress or overwhelm, however, just to acknowledge the height of potential fracture that a language can go through. Imporant to the clip, however, is that as far as my ears are concerned, this film is shot entirely in Roman dialect. The chosen non-representation of Italian in English speaking circles is pretty much "mammanama, mammanamammanamammanamana, mannnamammanamammaNA" and of course this film does nothing to dispel the caricature of the face fireworks that occur around a Roman dinner table. What it does effectively, is represent one strain of language that has become specific to a place -- and also a time, since these dialects are changing vastly -- with shimmering, shouting result.